


Exist

by iihappydaysii



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Hurt, Internalized Transphobia, It’s a little dark so just be careful, M/M, Phil POV, Phil is FTM, Trans Issues, its been so long I’ve forgotten how to tag things, mentions of transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 10:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20173057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iihappydaysii/pseuds/iihappydaysii
Summary: Phil is a trans man and thinking about transition and about his relationship with Dan.





	Exist

**Author's Note:**

> I know this fic isn’t the one everyone was hoping I’d update with but I wrote this months ago and I wanted to share now that I’m in a better place with my own transition.
> 
> (Also Dan is bisexual in this because it was written before he came out and because it works better for the story. Not a commentary on his actual identity, same for Phil of course)

Phil can’t remember when he first started getting people to call him Phil. Sure in their heads they probably saw it as Fil or Fel. Some shortened version of Felicia, the name his parents had burdened him with. But still, it was Phil. People said it like Phil and it made life just a little more tolerable.

His parents still called him Felicia though.  _ Fil is just so…masculine,  _ his mum had said, though Phil had never asked his parents to call him Phil. They just picked up on the fact that everyone else did. Especially, Phil’s boyfriend. Dan always called Phil, Phil. He is maybe the one person that sees his name the way Phil does. P-H-I-L. His parents just don’t know why.

Phil will never forget that first conversation. How hard he’d been shaking. How dry his mouth had been. The cool wetness on his cheeks and the thought  _ if you were actually a man you wouldn’t cry so easily.  _

“I’ve been questioning my gender,” Phil managed.

“Okay,” Dan had replied which wasn’t helpful at all.

“I think I might be, um, a trans guy.”

Silence, more silence, then, “I had no idea. I never would’ve guessed” said with genuine surprise.

Dan hadn’t meant it to hurt, but it had poked that insidious doubt in Phil’s mind  _ you’re just confused. You’re making this up for attention.  _

_ _ Phil doesn’t want anyone to misunderstand. Dan’s supportive, even if he doesn’t fully get it. Which how the fuck can he? Phil doesn’t fully understand it. He’s just now starting to use male pronouns in his head (he/him, he/him) and still sometimes he misgenders himself. What kind of self respecting trans person misgenders themselves? A cis man would never forget that he’s a man.

Dan doesn’t forget. 

Speaking of Dan, one time, Phil had made the god-awful decision to tell one of his friends about his struggles with gender identity. One of their few friends that happened to know that Dan was attracted to boys too.

She leaned in and whispered, “Is this because Dan’s gay? I know you don’t want to lose him but…”

Phil had been righteously pissed at the time. It didn’t change the fact that another seed of self doubt had been planted. And there were times, when Dan was riding Phil’s realistic silicone cock and crying out to be fucked harder that that awful thought would crop up again  _ is  _ this because Dan’s gay?

Dan isn’t gay, though. He’s bisexual.  _ Classically trained  _ was how he’d once described it. Experienced with both men and women and utterly indifferent to sex or gender. Still. Phil had been called Dan’s beard more times than he could count. YouTube comments on Dan’s video  _ come on baby. leave your beard girlfriend and let me give that pretty ass what it really needs.  _ Phil hadn’t meant to memorize it, but some things just stuck with you. It had taken every ounce of self-restraint not to reply  _ I give Dan’s ass what it needs just fine, you godzilla-sized dickbag. _

_ _ He knows it isn’t true. Dan is attracted to Phil, however, he presents. But he knows how much of the world might see it. How much of the world might feel sorry for him, feel sorry that he’s so desperate to cling onto his clearly gay boyfriend that he’d cut his tits off just to keep him.

Phil wished he could cut his tits off and he’s thought of lots of ways he could do it. He’s even had absolutely abhorrent thoughts about getting some minor breast cancer, so he could get a mastectomy without question. Though a mastectomy isn’t top surgery. It’s not masculinizing your chest. It would be an improvement but it wouldn’t be what Phil really wanted. Neither would a breast reduction surgery, even though it would help him bind. Right now, even with a binder, he just goes around with a Thor sized chest on a pre-Super Solider formula Steve Rogers. 

And he  _ hates  _ having to always have sex with his shirt on, but it’s better than the alternative. For him, there’s no boner killer worse than having to watch his fucking triple Ds flopping around. Dan had meant well when he’d once told him  _ you’re a man, and they’re on you, so they’re a man’s breasts.  _ Phil gets the sentiment, knows that some people feel that way about themselves. He wishes he were one of them, wishes he could embrace his breasts as part of a masculine identity. It would be easier. Easier than the fantasies of cutting them off with a sharp pair of kitchen scissors. 

Sometimes when Dan touches him, it turns his stomach. Phil hates it because it’s not Dan’s fault. He hates the reminder that his body is a thing. That he’s not just some incorporeal blob out there floating around, but he’s shackled in this body that’s soft and curved and has more “subcutaneous fat” under the skin than a man should. He has a vagina and calling it ‘his junk’ doesn’t stop it from being a vagina, doesn’t stop him from bleeding like a motherfucker once a month or getting wet instead of hard or needing birth control so that when Dan has sex with him he doesn’t get pregnant.

And that’s another fucking thing. They want to have kids, right? One day. Phil really does want that, but he can’t even fathom the idea of waddling into the obgyn looking like an m-preg fic come to life. He hates attention, hates being stared at and making others accommodate, what people on the internet just love to call his “delusions”. He can’t even imagine the whispers. On top of that, he can hear his mum’s voice,  _ you can’t just not be your baby’s mother. Your baby needs a mother. _

_ _ Phil would want to lay into her about how same-sex couples do just fine raising kids and this wasn’t any different, but in the back of his mind he would wonder,  _ is this different? Am I being selfish? _

_ _ Phil knows Dan would have his back if he decided to publicly transition. That Dan would do what Dan does, which is make himself a wall between Phil and the world, and take as much of the heat as he could. Still, it would be Phil’s identity, Phil’s weight to carry. Phil whose existence would be permanently defined and also endlessly debated. 

At worst, Phil’s family would disown him. At an unlikely best, they’d humor him. They’d call him their son to be nice, use his chosen name, but at the end of the day, they would never really see him as their son. Not the way they saw Martyn. And the most important people in his life, the ones he really wish could see him, truly, aren’t strangers on the street who might look at him with T and top surgery and think, “yup, that’s a bloke.” It’s the people he loves. His family, his friends, Dan. Who will always know the truth, which is actually a lie, which is actually why no one, not even Dan will ever really know him.

It’s a kind of loneliness Phil would do almost anything not to feel. Even if Phil transitions the way Dan often encourages him to, he knows it won’t be enough. It doesn’t give Phil a childhood, doesn’t give Phil an adolescence. Felicia stole those things, warped them into something Phil can’t recognize even when he tries. He often dreams of what it would have been like to meet Dan, for Dan to have fallen in love with him as a man. For their first sexual encounter to have been on Phil’s terms instead of Felicia’s. But, he’ll never have that. Never.

He tries to tell himself that no one has the perfect life. They all have scars and pain and weight to carry on their backs. This is just his and he should accept his own misery. But isn’t that the problem? It’s not  _ his  _ misery. It’s the history, the memory, the experience of someone who no longer exists, who never really existed, not in the way other people get to exist. 

It’s all Phil wants really. To exist. To have always existed. It’s all Phil wants and it’s the one thing he’ll never have. 


End file.
